


where you go and where you've been

by gumbridge



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, Judaism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-20
Updated: 2013-06-20
Packaged: 2017-12-15 13:23:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/850027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gumbridge/pseuds/gumbridge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	where you go and where you've been

**Author's Note:**

> This is the Jewish Levi fic I've been thinking about since before I even started reading Attack on Titan. I am headcanoning his family here as [crypto-Jewish](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-Judaism), because Isayama will probably never go into Levi's past enough to contradict me, and because I feel like it.
> 
> The title of this fic comes from Mirah's song [Bones and Skin](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuwMCy2islQ).

Levi doesn't think about his parents much. They're long dead, killed not by titans but a fire that had eaten them just as thoroughly, leaving behind it blankets of ash stitched with bone.

He doesn't think about them; the military keeps him busy, and there's no point in dwelling on the past.

Sometimes his soldiers will lie around in the evening, passing around a bottle of whatever they've gotten their hands on that day, reminiscing – their mother's kartoffelkloesse, their aunt's pfeffernusse on birthdays; the horses their father whittled for them from scraps of firewood, _with_ tack and bit and all; the girl they left behind. 

Her legs, they say, sighing, rapturous; _ah_ , you should have seen her legs!

Sometimes Petra will kick the soldier sighing about the half-mythical girl and her legs, and she'll gleefully, vengefully describe the boy she left. His thighs, she'll sigh, his wiry arms! And then she'll say, ah, and then there was this _girl_..., and leave it there, smug as her comrades clamour for detail.

Levi doesn't participate in the discussions. He doesn't take the same comfort from the storytelling and doesn't feel the need to share much of his past; they know enough to trust him. That's all any of them need.

He doesn't fall back on his past too often, but sometimes, in the late evening, when the cookfire's long out and the moon's hidden itself behind clouds and he can't go over his gear or log of titan sightings, he takes out some memories. He unpacks them as he would a crate of supplies, examining them for wear and sorting them into rows and columns. Levi is neat with all his possessions.

His parents had owned a few books, rare and precious just for the paper. He'd only been able to read one of them, and it had had a story about a family with many sons, one also named Levi. He remembers his mother reading that story to him, smoothing her free hand over his hair. 

Levi remembers squirming at that, whining a little. He had been a child; children whined.

His mother had made kartoffelkloesse, and pfeffernusse too, and sauerbraten and schnitzel when they'd had meat. But she'd also made bread rich and yellow with eggs, braided and baked till it looked like the currents in the district canal when they opened the gates, shellacked brown. He remembered those loaves gleaming in candlelight: they'd used oil lamps in the house, mostly, but the bread in his memory always had the shine of candles on it.

Levi'd had lullabies he didn't understand, nonsense words or a language he didn't know. He'd been inquisitive, curious, asked his parents what they meant. He'd been warm and sleepy in his little cot and his father had tucked him in with his patchwork blanket, had said, it's a prayer.

Levi had asked then, what's a prayer?

And his mother had come over and smoothed his hair like she always had been, and said, a song you sing when you're grateful, or when you need something, or when you're glad.

Or when you're scared, Levi's father added, or when your throat's too full to sing anything else.

It hadn't made sense and he'd pestered them for an explanation. We'll tell you when you're older, they said, but he'd been so frustrated he didn't give up until they said, when you're grown. We'll tell you when you're thirteen.

He had been eight then, or maybe seven. The fire had been in Levi's tenth summer.

Levi doesn't remember much of the fire, years later. Loud noise, heard as if muffled; the orange of fire burning high. The houses crowded too close together, the fire hopping from one thatched roof to the next easier than a cat.

The fire burned too hot and too long to leave much from Levi's house: the metal pots, mostly, twisted and charred. The blanket of ash afterwards was too thick and soft. He'd stubbed a toe on a frying pan, buried under a drift.

Levi had never gotten that explanation. He'd turned thirteen without fanfare, spent it beating up children older than him. The district clock had tolled six in the evening and he'd thought, startled, I'm an adult now. Then he'd spat the blood out of his mouth, kneed the boy in front of him in the kidneys, and got on with the brawl.

The lullaby stuck with him, though. Sometimes when he and his soldiers ride out into undefended territory it rises to the top of his mind, jostled there by the movement of the horse under him, maybe. Their formation moves in quick swerves and straight dashes and Levi thinks, unbidden, _Shema yisrael._

Words he doesn't understand.

Tonight Gunter has the bottle and the attention of his comrades. He's telling a story about his childhood, something small and entertaining. Ness interrupts with a correction and next to him Cis laughs. Levi listens in absently but reserves most of his attention for his maneuver gear: he checks over the straps and mechanism whenever they stop for the night. A soldier's life depends on the quality of his equipment.

When he'd first joined the military Levi had thought maybe to find someone with similar memories of their own parents. But he hadn't, and he doesn't, and now he pays just enough attention to the stories to make sure nothing too inappropriate is being said. His memories from before the military get bundled back up in their oilcloth, get tied back up precisely with their worn twine, get put back in the crate of his memories. Levi has his buckles to inspect and the horses to check on one last time tonight.

They return to Wall Maria in the morning.


End file.
